The Hodgkiss Mysteries Volume 5 — Peter Sinclair

Hodgkiss is a suspicious old sod. When he hears of a dead body found in a locked room and the police have written it off as suicide, his suspicions are seriously aroused. He wins no accolades when he tells his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, who has to investigate these crimes, 'The very fact that the body is found in such obiously improbable and contrived circumstances should, of itself, be sufficient to raise the gravest suspicions in the mind of any intelligent investigator.'

This fifth volume of The Hodgkiss Mysteries contains three such cases which present ingenious variations on the locked room murder theme.

Hodgkiss and the Second Bullet: In the first story a particularly obnoxious member of Kanundda Council, a body notorious for its venal conduct, is found shot dead in his study. In spite of the barred windows and bolted door Hodgkiss soon demonstrates how the man was murdered and his killer managed to escape the scene of his crime.

Hodgkiss and the Stolen Memory: The second case is a new variation on the theme where the body is discovered in a flat with all the windows and doors locked and the safety chain on the door in place.

Hodgkiss and the Blonde Visitor: The third case offers an entirely new approach to solving the problem of the locked room murder. The solution is complicated when a water main bursts in the street outside the murder house, creating a huge hole in the roadway which attracts emergency services and news crews. Hodgkiss is baffled until he re-reads a children's book which unexpectedly presents him with an unlikely solution.

A must for lovers of locked room murders and impossible crimes.